Existence is political

I know exactly how you feel.

I'm still Big Mad from the animation industry AI news, and I had some thoughts I needed to get out. There are lots of more important reasons why artists shouldn't use AI, but here is my philosophical take on it.

this is a real shocker of a story, and you can tell that it's just the tip of an iceberg. I strongly encourage any Australian to read this article in full, because these people are far more connected to wealth and power than I think anyone believed. This is becoming a serious danger. you can bypass the paywall on removepaywall if you need to. There is a lot of money flowing into the pockets of avowed Nazis seeking to start a race war in Australia.

@clarencechampagne people claim otherwise because it's nice to imagine there's an inviolable inner sanctum of what you truly believe and who you truly are, and the notion that the core of your self can be changed not even from inside but by a bump on the head shakes people who emotionally rely on the notion of mental states being essential and transcendant, even when they're nominally a materialist. we like to think mind is safe from matter.

also coming from the political perspective people get very uncomfortable (understandably so) around the notion of people whose politics and conduct are cruel and harmful being that way because of a brain injury, stroke, illness, etc. some harm to them that they did not will. it breaks the notion of worldview and politics being powered by will and agency, which a lot of people, again, rely on for their moral political frameworks, even when they say they're materialist marxists.

To this view, If someone has harmful politics it means that they're a bad person. And if someone is a bad person, then they will that under their own agency. They chose to be a bad person and they could choose otherwise. The moral causation, under this view, arises solely from within the mind, rather than anything material. The notion that someone could become a harmful presence due to material situations outside of their control is deeply threatening to this sense of self, which is often taken for granted as common sense. The notion that we have ultimate and final control over ourselves, and the notion that we can keep our inner selves safe from the world by enforcing a determination on our own worldview, like, committing ideologically to a stance as protection from the world, is something that a lot of people, especially leftists, rely on, and the notion that you could get very badly hurt and come out of that with a brain that engages in harmful politics, engages in a harmful worldview, due to an injury, due to a disability, is morally threatening to a lot of people.

And I think that's understandable, but I don't think it's correct. I think there's a lot of compassion that's called for, regarding people who push back against the notion that, essentially, an injury, a disability, could make you what they see as a bad person. It's understandable why that would deeply freak you out and it's understandable why you wouldn't want to hear it. But I think the issue here is a deeper one of how people conceptualize ontology and ethics and morality and politics in general.

He didn't do it.

The cops very clearly planted evidence on him because they had to make an arrest because all eyes were on them and whoever actually did the deed was making them look stupid.

Why would the real killer hero have kept the weapon on his person and traveled two states over while carrying it and a manifesto in his bag, conveniently turning the crime into a federal matter? The same guy whose bag they found in a park, filled with monopoly money? Why did the police turn off their bodycams, take Luigi's stuff, drive a block away, turn their bodycams back on, go back into the restaurant, and then arrest him?

Let's see how capitalism performs without government.

No patents that destroy competition.

No prisons as a source of cheap labor.

No wars that capitalists can profit from.

No calling the police to evict tenants.

No calling the police on employees who steal.

No corporate lobbyists.

No calling the police to protect capitalists from rioters.

No criminalizing homelessness.

it would be a mistake to think that this represents the natural behavior of chickens.

it would be a mistake to think that the social displacement harms we do to each other as marginalized people under a great deal of stress, under capitalism, represents the natural behavior of people.